Encyclopedia

(SEGregated WITness) A technique that improves the efficiency of a cryptocurrency network. Used in the Litecoin network and adopted by Bitcoin in August 2017, SegWit moves the digital signatures (the witnesses) to the end of the block, which is also larger (up to 4MB). As a result, blockchain data can be downloaded faster for validators that are not verifying transaction integrity. SegWit is a "soft fork," which means that service providers and digital wallets do not have to comply immediately. SegWit2x is an additional approach that proposed splitting Bitcoin after SegWit but was cancelled in November 2017. See Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and blockchain.

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